You might have wondered a lot of times about the way to reach happiness and for sure you might have given yourself this kind of answers: “becoming rich” or “buying a new house” or “going to the Caribbean on holidays” and so on. To tell the truth, this is a wrong conception of happiness, it concerns the material sphere and neglects the emotional one, which has got a lot to do with the real meaning of happiness.

In order to help you to find the right answer, I suggest you the first step to take to find your happiness, that is to figure out what makes you really happy. Most of us, erroneously, identifies it with whatever our society makes us believe that brings happiness. Therefore, it is essential that your goals and your idea of happiness really spring from you and from nobody else.

What goals could they be? Well, as mentioned before, the material success, having lots of friends, a lot of money, being famous, all goals which do not bring the real happiness, I am telling you. Unfortunately, most people think about happiness as something which occurs casually (as winning the lottery or totocalcio) or as something to be reached, rather than something to be created. All of us hope to get the best and to work towards goals that make us happier, therefore, getting the wrong direction, because we move outside ourselves: on the contrary, it is us who have in our hands the power to get and to keep our happiness, simply with our actions.

It is important for you to understand that, even if the others may influence your life, still it is you the one who chooses in the end. Although the others may contribute to your happiness, it is you the one who understands if you are really happy in the end.

For sure it is essential for everybody to have someone to interact with and to share our own life but is absolutely forbidden to let them control our feelings. And, turning our own vision of life into a positive one (we will see how later on), it could be a good idea to reduce to the minimum the contacts with those people who are always negative and who damage our own happiness.

It is essential that you are satisfied with yourself otherwise you will never feel worthy of the attention and affection of others.

It is normal to have doubts about ourselves and to be aware of our own defects, but it is also important to show our talents, our qualities and our value, not only to those who are close to us, but to the entire world too.

Even more important than reducing the relations with the negative people around you, is to try to be surrounded by positive and supporting people. Being difficult, if not impossible, to avoid completely the negative people in our own life, it is important to look for and spend time with happy and positive people. In this way, you will inevitably make yours the characteristics and habits of those people who are close to you, so be careful to choose friends and colleagues that look like the happy person you mean to become.

Even if the responsibility of your happiness is only yours, therefore to meet other people who are getting through your similar path might be helpful. The comparison with these people is very important, because they could give you useful and precious ideas that you had not even taken into consideration, so as suggestions and strategies to practice. If you do not know anybody in this situation, you could address yourself to a professional who helps you and shows you the right way to be followed along the path.

I care a lot about pointing out that it does not matter what makes us happy in our life, since our life is already something to be celebrated, a gift given to us in order to make our soul grow. So, I really advice you to appreciate all the things you have, do not concentrate, instead, on what you do not have. Be grateful for all the little things which happen to you daily: from the chat with a neighbour, to the smile of a child, to the food you eat, to the purchase of an object or whatever. Most of all, be grateful for your breath, which allows you to live and without which you could not do. It seems to be so obvious, instead it is very important to dwell on this gift given to us by our creator. The fact of existing is already something unique and precious.

Avoid concentrating on the past or the future and concentrate rather on the present, on the here and now, you will see how happier you will feel. Of course, in order to live happily in the present and to build a happier future, you must forget the experiences of your past, to forgive those people who caused you pain. Forgetting the past, you will get rid of a lot of anger piled up inside your body and that blocks the flow of the positive energy which runs towards you, but which does not have access. With forgiveness, it will be easy for you to release anger, fear and all the other negative emotions piled up inside you during your childhood or adolescence. In fact, forgiveness does not imply the remission of the fact, but the release of that emotional burden caused by that situation, making not only your soul, but also the “forgiven” soul free, opening the way to love, which only through forgiveness can be reached. As a consequence, also fear will be vanished, the fear of the others, of their judgment, of failure and so on.

Of course, in order to reach happiness, you have to keep a positive behavior. This means to surround yourself with positive people, who share the same positive thoughts with you or who are in line with your behavior. Make positive people get into your life and minimize the relationships with negative people. You can start with changing subjects, postponing appointments, reducing the telephone calls and so on. You see, the more you practice the habit to put aside the negative thoughts and emotions, the more this habit will become part of your character.

One of the best ways to reach happiness in our life is to help the others, in different ways. And you will be compensated in a great manner! Also, you will be able to build up better relationships with those who are close to you, because the positive energy that you bring into the world will come back to you in unexpected and unimaginable ways.

Going back to the positive behavior, keep in mind that your environment itself offers you a lot of opportunities to keep you in a positive behavior so as to reach happiness. Everything you get in touch with daily contributes to your mental state and offers you suggestions which you could never imagine. This is the reason why the place where you work must be clean and lightful, maybe with brilliant and bright colors.

Finally, but not because less important, I remind you to keep a positive mind using the statements, a powerful instrument needed as reminder and encouragement of what you desire to get.